and hover over smaller kids, standing right on top of them until they damn near volunteered their train pass. For that whole silly summer of thirteen, D felt he owned this subway—the iron horse was his personal ride, and he could decide if those around him rode in fear or comfort.
D had escaped incarceration by sheer dumb luck and the influence of a cop named Tyrone “Fly Ty” Williams, the patron saint of the Hunter family who’d recently retired from the NYPD (and was now chillin’ somewhere outside ATL). Like a lot of kids who’d mugged people as a teenager, D never saw himself as a criminal or thug or predator, justifying everything he’d done as an adventure. If he’d grown up in a place with fast cars and open roads, D would have been racing near cliffs on precarious curves.
At thirteen he’d wanted a thrill and robbing people had been that. Despite his size, D was never solely the muscle. He’d been a tactician. A strategist. He pointed people out, whistled that a mark was coming. He had kicked people and scared people and enjoyed the chase. These days D was all about security, keeping people safe and being a paragon of some loose virtue. He stayed as clean as hand towels, yet was always vaguely worried his bad adolescent deeds would somehow catch up with him.
D’s move back to Brooklyn was triggering many unwelcome memories. But the “new” Brooklyn of today pulled him back to now. Where had all these white people come from? He remembered when they all got off at the Lafayette stop. Then some went one stop farther to Clinton-Washington. Now they went to Nostrand and sometimes all the way out to Ralph. That lots of white people, mostly in their twenties and often dressed corny, rode this far into Bed-Stuy bugged him out. Word was these new white folks had already staked claim to Bushwick, and were edging into the border of the rugged, distant ghetto hoods of Brownsville and East New York.
D was even more shocked by the goatee-growing, Converse sneaker–wearing, tight jean and peacoat–sporting black folks these hipster types rolled with. He’d dealt with more than his share of bourgie, suit-and-tie fly Negroes in his day and way too many bureaucratic Queens home-owning black people staring at him across desks at clinics, Social Security offices, and police precincts. None of them seemed that different from D except they had a nine-to-five and he didn’t.
But these new black folks were from a planet D hadn’t visited. So when one of these kinky-haired, peacoat-wearing dudes approached him, D didn’t know what to think. In another era this guy would have been a mark, someone he and his crew of thirteen-year-olds would have smacked and jacked. The dude reached into his pocket, pulled out a flyer, and said, “You look like a music head. If you have any vinyl to sell, come through.” D nodded and took the flyer as the kid and his white buddy exited the C train at Ralph. The flyer read, VINYL DUNGEON. Bushwick.
D surveyed it, stuffed it in his pocket, then shook his head.
THAT’S THE WAY OF THE WORLD
Rajan, fourteen years old and angry, sat on a Mother Gaston Boulevard curb holding his left leg as blood oozed out of a small gunshot wound through his jeans. He was already a vision of scarlet with his red flat-brimmed New York Yankees cap with the reflective sticker still attached, red bandanna, red hoodie, and neon-red sneakers now dotted with his own blood. His small-caliber pistol lay in the gutter next to one of his sneakers. The air stank of burnt fabric.
A kid named Z-Bo, dressed in a similar crimson costume, stood laughing. He pointed at Rajan and said, “I told you, yo, that safety wasn’t on.”
“Fuck you!” Rajan snapped. He was trying to seem hard but tears were welling in his eyes.
D walked over and stood there as Z-Bo used his cell phone to snap shots of his friend’s predicament. “You wanna bleed to death?” D asked.
“Do I look stupid?” replied Rajan.
“Wrong answer,” said D.
“Fuck you.”
D reached down, grabbed the hand Rajan had shot himself with, and pressed it onto the wound. Rajan yelped but D looked him in the eye and the kid fell silent. D took Rajan’s hat off, pulled off his bandanna and stretched it out, then wrapped it tight around the kid’s leg. “You Damu’s brother?”
“No,” Rajan answered, apparently more concerned about this question than his accidently shot leg. “He my uncle.”
“I don’t know how you’re gonna keep this from him,” D said. “But maybe your boy shouldn’t be posting pictures on Facebook.”
Rajan turned toward Z-Bo. “You posting?”
“No,” Z-Bo lied.
“Why don’t you call 911?” D said.
“What?” Z-Bo said.
“Yo,” D countered, “man up.”
“What you sayin’?” Z-Bo said.
“Call 911, fool!” Rajan shouted.
D held out his hand. “I should take the gun.”
“I paid eight hundred dollars for that gun,” Rajan said. “Who the fuck are you?”
“I know your family. My name is D Hunter. I know possessing that gun will get you in more trouble than getting shot with it.”
“He’s right, yo,” Z-Bo affirmed.
“Whatcha know anyway?” said Rajan.
A small crowd was gathering on the sidewalk now that it was clear that this gun shot was, on this day, a singular event.
D took Rajan’s gun and put it in his waist against the small of his back.
“I should take the gun,” Z-Bo said. D ignored him, as did Rajan.
D asked Rajan, “Your mom’s at work?”
“I guess . . . No, she home.”
“So you better call her.”
“No. She can’t see me in the gutter like this.”
D said, “Bet she gets here faster than EMS,” then looked at Z-Bo. “Stop talking pictures and call his moms.”
Z-Bo called, pulling Rajan’s mother away from the Kardashians’ latest drama. Rajan was getting dizzy, but the bleeding had slowed and he was moaning through the pain, which to D suggested the kid would live. D wondered if there was a reality competition show in guessing who could get to an injured ghetto child faster—NYPD, EMS, or a reality show–watching mother.
There was some blood on D’s right palm, most of it already dry. He hadn’t thought about why he’d walked over to help this stupid kid. Hadn’t he learned long ago that minding your business was the safest way to get through your day in Brownsville? But Rajan’s uncle, Damu, had done some security work when business was good and was now in the army stationed somewhere in the Middle East.
Now here D was with a bloody hand holding the pistol of a kid who’d shot himself in the leg. Rajan was lucky as hell that he hadn’t shot his own dick off. D glanced over at the onlookers and had a sobering thought: What if this kid has hep B or even C?
“Here comes your ma!” Z-Bo pointed down the
